wonky

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Chicago is known as a wonky school full of nerdy intellectual types so it wasn't surprising that I was able to easily gather a group willing to pick up this 1079 page cinderblock.

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Definitions (4)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. adjective Chiefly British Shaky; feeble.
  2. adjective Chiefly British Wrong; awry.

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Examples (50)

  • There is a precise moment when Blindness goes wonky, a single sequence that shows how unrealistic Meirelles plans on playing with this metaphoric material. —  PopMatters
  • Complicated and wonky is a headache to put together well from the high street. —  The Guardian World News
  • Character spacing goes all wonky, with some letters colliding and other pairs so far apart they look like unwanted word breaks. —  RealClimate
  • 'I Can't Stay' is brilliantly wonky: steel drums, harpsichords and a shuffling rhythm which Keuning describes as 'stranded on an island', and which Flowers admits was taken from Unit 4+2's 1965 British No 1 'Concrete and Clay' (he heard it on the soundtrack to Rushmore). —  Culture | guardian.co.uk
  • Now people are openly admitting that they are putting on some bullshit front of a wonky, complex, hard-to-understand culture that they imposed on themselves when they moved to this craphole of a city? —  why.i.hate.dc
 

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This word has been looked up 106 times.

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Etymologies (1)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Probably alteration of dialectal wanky, alteration of wankle, from Middle English wankel, from Old English wancol, unsteady.
 

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